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Fallout 3 was good until I realized that the main plot revolved around who gets to purify irradiated water (not a difficult task at all) using the Jefferson Memorial, which is at the mouth of a tidal basin. A war is being fought over who gets to turn on the tap of a machine that does nothing but piss in the ocean.

I had to stop playing. Who would green-light a story so daft?

To be fair, you can boil almost any real-life war down to something equally ridiculous.

I played very little FO3 before installing Wanderer's Edition, so when I think of the game I don't think of the vanilla game, you'll have to forgive me for that. Since NV introduced "hardcore mode" I was expecting a more FWE experience out of NV, and got something quite different. Not bad, mind you, just very different than I was expecting.

Incidentally, if you're interested in a survival experience where sleep is vital, clean water is sparse,balancing radiation intake versus starvation requires careful thought, and ammunition is worth its weight in gold, I'd highly recommend Wanderer's Edition for FO3 and, once they've got it tidied up, Project Nevada for New Vegas (same modders).

@Wizardry

I'd pay real money for a new Wasteland game, yes.

I'd have to second this, also. I enjoyed vanilla (with a few minor mods to fix things like the UI and pistols causing arms to fly off) for many hours and thought it vastly better than, say, oblivion, however before long I was one-shotting everything with a fairly basic wapon, carrying practically infinite health and ammo, and never even came remotely close to being killed. It became boring.

So I got round to installing FWE and MMM (mutant mod), and then spent the requisite afternoon installing a dozen other major (related) mods. And oh my, it is terrific fun. Everything is rare and expensive. Even useless crap like tin cans and detergent has a purpose, and I've even found myself scavenging piles of completely worthless crap because I'm so desperate for cash and combat is just too dangerous. Almost anything can kill you in seconds (and you them, making every fight quick, tense, and exciting - there's none of the tedious attrition of most RPGs), enemies take cover and work together, and even panic and run away, and getting injured is a serious problem.

I only wish I could mix it with Arwen's even more advanced hunger and medical needs mod without breaking the game, but it still turns Fallout into a magnificent survival and fighting game.

To be fair, you can boil almost any real-life war down to something equally ridiculous.

Religious wars, perhaps, though those tend at least to have an an underpinning of actual land grabs.

Here, there is no land worth grabbing (150 years of looting and salvaging means there's very little left in the urban areas, and the rural areas aren't fit for farming, being completely arid), slaves are a liability when it's hard to feed people, they already have all the technology worth having, and the macguffin is completely and totally useless.

While it goes a long way towards explaining why these people would be stupid enough to engage in thermonuclear armageddon, it doesn't explain why I shouldn't shoot them all for daring not to die the first time around.

NalanoH. Wildmoon
Director of the Friends of Nalano PAC
Attorney at Lawl
"His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy." - Woody Allen

It's called auto-leveling. Enemies in Oblivion are (believe it or not) scaled to player level. So are their gear so you end up with bandits with stuff on them worth tens of thousands of gold once you're high level enough.

It's called auto-leveling. Enemies in Oblivion are (believe it or not) scaled to player level. So are their gear so you end up with bandits with stuff on them worth tens of thousands of gold once you're high level enough.

There's nothing in the phrase "auto-leveling" that implies that their levels are scaled to your level.

With all the mods for Oblivion, surely someone has gotten rid of scaling enemies by now?

In a wide variety of ways, yes. Wizardry's right, though, you don't want to get rid of it entirely, you just want it to be done right. Vanilla Oblivion managed to tarnish the whole idea by doing it spectacularly wrong, of course, but if you want an example of what happens when you go the other way (and what Bethesda was trying to cure with Obliv's ludicrous scaling) you need only look at high level play in Morrowind. If you sneezed on the final boss at level 30+ he dropped dead.

This is the point that I lost the will to continue with Oblivion too. Really enjoyed the game to begin with, did all the Thieves' Guild quests, started on Dark Brotherhood, went back and did another Oblivion gate...then it all began to seem so same-same-same and uninvolving. I certainly got my money's worth out of it but I have never felt the urge to complete it or go dip back in.

Originally Posted by Hensler

With all the mods for Oblivion, surely someone has gotten rid of scaling enemies by now?

Yes this is easy to fix, I forget the mod but it's one of the commonly recommended ones...part of Francesco's mod? Only issue is you need to start a new game with it, using it with an old character save can break things.

In a wide variety of ways, yes. Wizardry's right, though, you don't want to get rid of it entirely, you just want it to be done right. Vanilla Oblivion managed to tarnish the whole idea by doing it spectacularly wrong, of course, but if you want an example of what happens when you go the other way (and what Bethesda was trying to cure with Obliv's ludicrous scaling) you need only look at high level play in Morrowind. If you sneezed on the final boss at level 30+ he dropped dead.

I know it wasn't Bethesda intention but I actually liked that in Morrowind. You're something of a demigod by the end of the game, It was nice to feel overpowered like one, and it would be annoying to be troubled by most enemies (not the end boss, I agree with beating him too easily is a bad thing).

But your point still stands, auto-levelling done right could be a very nice touch.

There is when the phrase "auto-leveling" comes directly after "Oh, Bethesda games...that reminds me." -- at least provided that you know about how auto-leveling works in Oblivion.

And if you don't, then you might stop to wonder "why would someone want a moratorium on auto-leveling, what sort of auto-leveling can they be talking about?"

It's okay. He just wants to gig me for not being as "expert" on the RPG genre as him.

That he didn't get the reference is my reward.

Originally Posted by vinraith

but if you want an example of what happens when you go the other way (and what Bethesda was trying to cure with Obliv's ludicrous scaling) you need only look at high level play in Morrowind. If you sneezed on the final boss at level 30+ he dropped dead.

That's just poor scaling.

Not that it matters. There were so many ways to break the game in Oblivion and beyond that no scaling could deal with the problem. I mean, 100% invisibility at all times.

Last edited by Nalano; 05-08-2011 at 08:50 PM.

NalanoH. Wildmoon
Director of the Friends of Nalano PAC
Attorney at Lawl
"His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy." - Woody Allen